The Playwrights Realm to Presents Beyond The Realm 2025 This Fall

The Playwrights Realm will present the third edition of Beyond The Realm, the theater festival that goes beyond script readings, traditional productions, and the limits of audience and stage (September 25 - November 2). Inaugurated in 2019, Beyond The Realm is a recent addition to the multifaceted systems of support the groundbreaking organization offers early-career playwrights: here, focusing on those whose works-in-development would benefit from alternate formats to typical staged readings and standard development models. In this radical space of experimentation, The Realm showcases three very different pieces—from Malena Pennycook, Malaika Fernandes, and Daria Miyeko Marinelli—respectively heightening theatricality through dance; projection; and audio and audience interaction.

The Playwrights Realm Executive Director Chris Berry said, “We’re thrilled to present these works by three daring writers who, in various capacities, have passed through The Realm—and to continue our support for their work with this singular opportunity. It’s hard to imagine another setting in which such distinct visions of how theater can be bent and expanded to tell particular stories would be presented all together. We can’t wait to bring these illuminating works in front of audiences and continue their journey.”

Whether surrounding a 16th century bout of mass hysteria, zeroing in on attempted understandings across the burdens and complexities of language, or encompassing a theatricalized tour of legacies of rebellion in New York, these works take an expansive approach to theater to illuminate and articulate the ways we respond to our chaotic world.

Malena Pennycook’s Choreomania 1518, directed by Tara Elliot, merges theater and dance in its timely exploration of what’s become known as the “Dancing Plague of 1518” in Strasbourg, wherein hordes of people abruptly began dancing—and continued for weeks (September 25 - 27). Malaika Fernandes’s MULAQAT, directed by Adil Mansoor (who recently earned acclaim for the New York premiere of his own work, Amm(i)gone), is further developed following its reading in The Realm’s INK'D Festival of New Plays (the annual culmination of The Playwrights Realm’s Writing Fellowship), now in a new presentation focusing on its use of vivid, dynamic projection (featuring handwritten recipes, drawings, and various animated elements), as the play illuminates the complexities of communication between a family across three different languages (October 16 - 18). Daria Miyeko Marinelli’s participatory WALK OUT, directed by Ellie Heyman, takes audiences out of the theater and into the streets in an ambulatory performance/meditation on injustice and uprising in New York. Engaging the audience in activism and asking what it takes to take a stand, WALK OUT gives participants agency over the many paths they can choose from (October 30 - November 2).

Each of the plays will have four free, open work-in-progress presentations in which audiences will get to experience and be a part of the pieces’ development. Audiences can RSVP at playwrightsrealm.org/beyond.

As new play development opportunities dwindle, particularly for untraditional or highly theatrical works, The Realm continues to shape its programs around early-career playwrights’ needs. The Realm produced a sold-out, extended, New York Times Critic’s Pick in Fall 2023 with Emma Horwitz’s Mary Gets Hers; then in Fall 2024, the organization returned to Beyond The Realm (after having presented the first iteration of the festival years earlier) in lieu of mounting a new production. Just as The Realm became a full-time playwright service organization during the pandemic, it again responded to another (directly linked) moment of turmoil and transformation for the industry and artists, with this program supporting invention and boundless imagination.

The Playwrights Realm Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner said, “I adore intensely theatrical theatre—productions where the design takes your breath away or the ensemble has found ways to imagine whole worlds out of a few small elements, or technology is being employed in ways I’d never imagined.  But it takes time and resources to create that type of theatre and the industry’s most traditional method of support—the reading—simply doesn’t provide space for design, creating physical vocabulary, or just generally focusing on theatricality.  That’s where Beyond The Realm comes in!”

Beyond The Realm Performance Schedule & Descriptions

Malena Pennycook’s Choreomania 1518

Directed by Tara Elliot

Dates:

Thurs Sept 25th, 7pm

Fri Sept 26th, 7pm

Sat Sept 27th, 3pm & 7pm

ART/NY Mezzanine Theatre

502 W 53rd St., New York

It's 16th-century France, and everything is horrible—bubonic plague, major agricultural collapse, and leadership that’s corrupt as all hell. When a potato farmer starts dancing uncontrollably in the field, her mania catches on, and a “dancing plague” breaks out. Call it mass hysteria or the only sane response in a world gone mad… but whatever you do, don't stop dancing.

Malaika Fernandes’s MULAQAT

Directed by Adil Mansoor

Dates:

Thurs Oct 16th, 7pm

Fri Oct 17th, 7pm

Sat Oct 18, 3pm & 7pm

651 ARTS

10 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn

When her husband's job transfers him abroad, Tanya finds herself pregnant and alone in the U.S. Her mother, Damini, rushes from India to take care of her; then her mother-in-law, Noor, comes from Pakistan. They’re supposed to help, but Damini only speaks Marathi and Noor only speaks Urdu — so it falls on Tanya to mediate in English, all while contending with the uncertain path her life will take once the child is born.

Daria Miyeko Marinelli’s WALK OUT

Directed by Ellie Heyman

Dates:

Thurs Oct 30th, from 5:30pm 

Fri Oct 31st, from 4pm

Sat Nov 1st, from 3pm

Sun Nov 2nd, from 3pm

The Flea Theater

20 Thomas St, New York

Bad things happen. They can make us feel powerless. Standing still and just watching it happen feels like the safest choice. WALK OUT challenges us to do more! This ambulatory meditation through New York invites audience members to take to the streets, learn about the city’s history of injustice and rebellion, and discover what discomfort (and adventure) exists in taking a stand.